Surplus
by gryffindormischief
Summary: Packing inevitably leads to reminiscing. It's unavoidable.


A/N: Yay another fic! This was kind of a prompt (I followed it a little loosely). Thank you to everyone who has read/favorited/followed/reviewed! Every notification makes me smile :)

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Following their agreement that Ginny should move in with Harry, Ron, and Hermione at Grimmauld Place, and the resulting four-hour discussion with an eerily calm Molly Weasley, Ginny began preparing for undertaking that is relocation. She'd been packing her necessities for the last week or so in her off time, but had finally managed to rope Harry in to helping her. She'd shown up at Grimmauld early that Saturday morning, wearing her cut offs and an old Weird Sisters t-shirt, hands on hips, and roused her fiancé with no nonsense instructions that her Burrow evacuation was not happening without some Auror assistance. Harry had groaned, smacking his lips together, eyes scrunched in an effort to see her face, and sighed, "What _time_ is it?"

Ginny answered by narrowing her eyes and shooting a jet of icy water directly into his face, "I'll see you at the Burrow in five minutes."

Seven and a half minutes later, Harry arrived in Ginny's room, still slightly damp, only to be greeted by her glorious, jean-clad bum and an order to get the 'damn boxes' out of her sight. Harry let out a chuckle and flicked his wand towards the cardboard terrors, dispatching them to a stack downstairs in the den, where they would soon be carted away from, through the floo, to Ginny's new living quarters.

By the time he tromped back up the stairs, Ginny was upright, allowing him the chance to lay a passionate kiss on her lips, before resting his forehead against hers and whispering, "I'm very excited."

Ginny grinned back and breathed, "Me too."

After another quick kiss, the Harpies' chaser smacked his bum and shooed him off to retrieve her old Hogwarts trunk from the attic. Harry unleashed the whining that is inevitable when someone at the Burrow is thrust into a situation that involves dealing with the ghoul, but complied eventually, after Ginny's murmured encouragement and… _motivational_ promises for later that evening.

Harry clambered up the stairs, and tiptoed through the dank, dusty upper room, peering around and hoping to complete his mission without alerting the ghoul, who was currently snoring in a holey basket stacked on top of old family albums. After locating what he believed to be Ginny's trunk, Harry slipped out the door, ducking his head back inside to whisper, "Thanks for faking illness for Ron mate." And with a salute, he creaked back down the wooden stairs with his unwieldy package.

With a dust induced sneeze, Harry plopped the trunk down, "I think there's still stuff in here, its all sliding around."

Ginny grimaced, dragging her forearm under her nose to itch it, "I've no idea what it could be."

Harry stuck out his tongue, face scrunched, "Hopefully nothing that goes bad."

"Ew."

With some trepidation and a silent promise to ask Hermione if there was a spell to temporarily eliminate your sense of smell, Harry flicked the lock and pushed the lid up with a squeak, one eye cracked open. He sighed in relief, " _Books_ – glad to see how much your education meant to you."

Shooting a stinging hex towards his bum, Ginny answered loftily, gesturing towards her forehead, "It's all in here. Besides, Hermione is the only person who reads textbooks for fun."

Harry rubbed at his sore arse but nodded, conceding the point, " _That_ is very true."

Ginny stepped towards him, gold painted toes curling in the nap of the shaggy rug, "Well I am right most of the time." She paused for a moment, stacking books in her arms, and turned her head to face Harry, "As you know."

Chuckling, Harry didn't argue, instead continued sifting through the detritus that littered the inside of the chest, before freezing, a flirtatious smirk crossing his face, "You know what is fun?"

His prompt remained unanswered for a few moments as Ginny slid the worn texts onto the bookshelves, hand painted orange courtesy of her highly artistic seven-year-old self. Pushing the last tome into its place, she wrinkled her nose against the dust, "Hmm?"

She could practically hear the hear the smugness in his voice as he drawled, "Knickers."

Ginny spun around rapidly, mouth open in indignation as she strode forward to snatch the purple knickers back, "Excuse you."

"You're the one who asked for my help…and by _asked_ I mean doused me in icy water and practically threatened me with bodily injury," Harry countered, dismissing her stern tone.

Smacking the back of his head in passing, Ginny slumped onto the floor in front of her dresser, stuffing her collection of jumpers into a box she'd had Hermione place an undetectable extension and featherweight charms on, in an effort to save her from aches later. _Although a massage from Harry wouldn't be a bad thing…maybe I'll suddenly have a cramp…_

"Hey Gin, snitch?"

She looked over her shoulder, a soft smile spreading across her face, "Fifth year…mine that is."

Harry looked down at the tiny gold ball in his hand, the feathery wings fluttering, his mouth splitting in an answering grin, "Very important snitch."

Ginny crawled over, nudging herself into his side, his arm coming around her shoulders as they slowly cleared through the remaining articles together. Harry tossed a Droobles into Ginny's lap, "How old is this? Bloody hell."

She scrunched her face thoughtfully, scratching her scalp, "It can't be _that_ old. I've only graduated 3 years –"

Moving deftly, Harry swiped the sweet out of her hand, scolding her with his babysitter voice, "Don't eat that." The red head scowled, but relented, thinking that she'd rather not use up a sick day on food poisoning from chewing gum.

Ginny placed a kiss on the underside of his jaw, retrieving a lonely, single black sock from the trunk, slipping it over her hand, creating a make shift puppet that apparently found Harry very attractive. As her hand peppered cloth kisses across his face, Harry lifted a stack of papers from the bottom of the trunk, looking at her and getting a mouth full of cotton, "You are a child."

"I'm adorable and playful," Ginny corrected, batting her eyes excessively.

Harry rubbed her nose with his, then returned to the parchment in his hands, "Forget to turn in an assignment Weasley?"

" _Hardly_. I got all O's my last year. Unlike _some_ people," Ginny said loftily, turning her freckly nose up.

With a scoff, Harry dropped his hands down into his lap, "I didn't _have_ a last year."

Ginny flicked her wand towards the corner, summoning a beat up quaffle from the floor beneath her desk chair in the corner, ruffling dust bunnies that had escaped Molly's watchful eye. She lay on her back and tossing the maroon ball skyward, catching it expertly each time it returned, "I think not going means you fail, dear."

Harry stuck his hand out, snaking the quaffle away, and sunk it smoothly into the laundry basket, filled with soon-to-be-washed unmentionables. Ginny grunted, eyes flashing, "Oi! I was using that. And those are my knickers and bras. Very delicate thank you very much."

Sticking his tongue out in a most mature response, Harry pulled the last few articles out of the trunk, placing them all in a pile on the floor next to him to be sorted, "If you think about it, _my_ seventh year was spent working to defeat Voldemort, and I'm _pretty sure_ I succeeded. So, I'd say that's an O."

Ginny pinched his side, drawing a hiss from her fiancé, "Someday I'm going to force you to stop pulling the 'I defeated Voldemort' card, and we will _all_ be happier for it."

"How do you plan on- oh. This isn't an incomplete assignment," Harry began mysteriously, pulling the wrinkled pages close to his chest and away from her grasping fingers.

He looked down again, mischief sparking in his eyes, "It's _better_."

Ginny fought again to pull the mysterious pages from his hands, to no avail, "Pretty much everything is better than homework – would you just-"

Placing one hand to her forehead, holding her at arms distance, he shook the parchment out in front of his face, clearing his throat importantly before reading aloud, " _Forehead marked with a bolt of light_. _Messy hair black as night-_ "

Color drained from the young Weasley's face. As realization dawned and the tension left her body she practically growled, "Bloody buggering – Luna was supposed to throw those _all_ away…including the one that got sent."

Harry quirked an ebony brow, hand slipping back to his lap, " _Sure_."

Ginny folded her arms across her chest, jaw clenched angrily, "Shut up Potter."

Placing the papers down next to his hip, Harry leaned forward, poking Ginny's sides playfully, blinking at her with affected innocence, "What about the get well card?"

"Well I did want you to get well," Ginny mumbled, head ducked towards the trash strewn floor.

Scooting to the foot of her childhood bed, Harry gestured for Ginny to sit between his legs, back pressed to his chest. They sat silently for a time, each caught up in memories of the years before they were _them._ As in together…a couple. _Practically married_ , Harry gaped inwardly, _how did I get here…an adult with a gloriously attractive Quidditch playing fiancé – who hasn't said a word…_

"I kept it y'know," Harry said softly, stroking up and down her bare arms.

Ginny picked at a string on his jeans absentmindedly, "Yeah?"

He smiled widely, pressing his lips to the crown of her head, "Although I will say I prefer your in person interactions to the cards and valentines."

She let out a short huff of a breath, some life and playfulness returning to her voice, "You were lucky to be chosen by such a fantastic red head. For _both_."

Harry let out a bark of a laugh, pulling the purple knickers he'd snatched earlier from his pocket and twirling them around his index finger, wiggling his eyebrows, "Can't argue with that."

Ginny's hand shot out quick as a flash, grabbing the unmentionable and stuffing it underneath the bed skirt, "Not that lucky."


End file.
